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Sunday, 3 January 2016

I have really been looking for a site where no one actually birds the area and thanks to the owners, Christine and Jed Jenkins, they have given me permission to bird Nethergong Campsite, situated just north of Grove Ferry. My target is to see if I can find 100 species throughout the whole year at this small site as well as informing the owners what birds actually occur throughout the year on their doorstep. Having never really birded here, I really don't know what the site has to offer and as a campsite, there will be periods of the year when the site is busy. On the plus side, there area also quite a few months where they are shut to the public and I will have the site to myself to wander around.I made my first visit to Nethergong on the 2nd January this year where in a two hour walk around, I managed to see or hear 40 species. This is a small site which measures approx 680 metres in length and 170 metres in width. It does have 3 fields on the north, east and west side of the patch which give nice extended views which will hopefully produce a few birds. As long as I am within the patch boundary, I can count it. Back to the birding and the highlights were 3 Bearded Tit which were found feeding on the big lake. Also seen were 4 Lesser Redpoll, a few Bullfinch, 1 Treecreeper, 2 Ring necked Parakeet, 1 Yellowhammer and believe it or not, my first Coot for the site. Having chased rares around for some years and no doubt I will continue to do this, it certainly back to basic birding which is still very rewarding. Hopefully I can make a number of visits each month to get nearer to the magic 100 species but I suspect photos will be quite challenging as it seems quite hard to get near to most birds here. I'm sure however, that I can post some shots every now and then and maybe even find a few scarce or rare birds, fingers crossed. For a look at the patch, click on the 'Patch Map' icon at the top of the blog.